Comelec proclaims Kabataan, Gabriela amid pending cases
By The News Team
After several attempts of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) to disqualify Kabataan Party-list and Gabriela Women’s Party, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) officially proclaimed and awarded the Certificates of Proclamation to the said party-lists yesterday, May 26.
Election Win and Proclamation
Winning the recently concluded national elections, Kabataan and Gabriela have each successfully acquired a seat in the lower house’s 63 seats allotted for party-list. With 536,690 votes, Kabataan’s first nominee Raoul Manuel is set to replace outgoing Representative Sarah Elago, while re-electionist Arlene Brosas remains as the representative of Gabriela.
This proclamation was made despite the earlier statement of the polling body that it would defer party-lists with unresolved cases. Both the aforementioned party-lists still face disqualification raps filed by the said government’s counter-insurgency council.
Deferment of Proclamation
In the last 2019 midterm elections, the Duterte Youth, a government mouthpiece in the disguise of being a youth representative, had to face the same circumstances as their first nominee Ronald Cardema received disqualification from the elections as he was 34 years old at that time, while laws on youth party-lists put an age ceiling of 30 years old for youth party-lists representatives.
Due to this, after a series of legal proceedings, the Comelec only awarded Duterte Youth’s certificate of proclamation, a must-have for them to have a legitimate exercise of power, months after the proclamation. However, the “youth” representative had to be replaced by Cardema’s wife, Ducielle Marie.
In a social media rally, the Kabataan Party-list and Gabriela Women’s Party have called for their supporters to ensure that their votes would not be wasted due to the fears of deferring their proclamation.
“Ngunit kahit ang tagumpay ng [pagkapanalo] natin sa Kabataan Party-list ay tinatangkang harangin ng NTF-ELCAC. ‘Di tayo papayag. Hindi tayo papayag na harangin ang 530,000 na sumuporta hindi lamang sa boses ng Kabataan…” Kabataan said in a Facebook post.
Rep. Brosas, in a Facebook post on Gabriela’s page, said “This old, fabricated disqualification case is hinged on red-tagging and spurious claims, and should not be made as basis to withhold the proclamation of Gabriela Party-list. In fact, the case should be dismissed.”
‘Red-tagging’ of Genuine Representatives
The NTF-ELCAC filed an electoral disqualification against Gabriela in the May 2019 elections, accusing the women’s party list of accepting foreign funds and of supporting the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army. Meanwhile, Kabataan’s case was filed only last June 2021 alleging the youth organization was aiming to destabilize the government.
However, the two party-lists denied the allegations and slammed the counter-insurgency unit for using its office to red-tag legitimate and genuine representatives of the people in the hopes that it would silence them.
“This really is a desperate attempt to silence dissent,” Alnie Foja, a lawyer representing the women’s party, told the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism.
In a report by Rappler, outgoing Representative Elago claimed that cases against their party-list and other opposition groups are a broader attempt to silence dissent.
The NTF-ELCAC, under its spokesperson Presidential Communications Undersecretary Lorraine Badoy, has been doing a red-tagging spree to the opposition camps, even without sufficient evidence, which has intensified during the pandemic. In connection to this, Badoy herself is currently facing both administrative and criminal raps before the Office of the Ombudsman.
